Creation (Movie Tie-In)

by Randal Keynes

  Jenny the orang was brought to London in 1837 and purchased by the Zoological Society from her importer. She appeared in her child’s clothes on the front page of the widely-read Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. The question she posed about animal and human nature was clearly recognised to be important for the magazine’s many readers, and a long article comparing her with Tommy concluded with apparent relief that “extraordinary as the Orang may be compared with its fellows of the brute creation, still in nothing does it trench upon the moral or mental provinces of man.” But William Broderip, an acquaintance of Charles who was helping him with the Beagle specimens, struck a slightly disquieting note in his account of Jenny in the New Monthly Magazine. “The personage who has lately arrived at the gardens of the Zoological Society in the Regent’s Park, and is now ‘the observed of all observers,’ is of the softer sex, and very young. She receives company in the Giraffe-house, and appears amiable, though of a gravity and sage deportment far beyond what is usual at her years.” Her keeper watched as a carpenter worked on her cage. He said: “Come, Jenny, you must leave the carpenter alone,” and gently led her away. “ ‘Dear me!’ said a lady; ‘Dear me! does she know what is said to her?’ ‘Yes, she knows her name, Ma’am,’ was the cautious reply: upon which the lady said ‘Dear me!’ again.”

  Queen Victoria saw the second Jenny on a visit to the Zoological Gardens with Prince Albert in 1842. She wrote in her diary that Jenny was “too wonderful,” preparing and drinking her tea and “doing everything by word of command.” She was “frightful, and painfully and disagreeably human.”

  In early 1838, while Jenny was holding court in the giraffe house, the Geological Society persuaded Charles to become their secretary. The president was the Reverend William Whewell, a Cambridge polymath and close friend of Herschel, Henslow and Sedgwick. The Cambridge men of science were greatly impressed by Charles’s geological findings on HMS Beagle, and his ambitious theories about coral atolls and the elevation and subsidence of continents.

  The first meeting that Charles attended as secretary was the anniversary meeting in February at which Whewell presented the society’s medal to Professor Owen for his descriptions of Charles’s Patagonian fossils. The fellows sat round a grand horseshoe table in the society’s rooms in Somerset House, as an icy wind rattled the windows and deep snow drifted in the streets outside. It was a red-letter day for Charles; the realisation of his dream of making a contribution to the “noble structure of natural science.” As he sat at the table with Lyell, Professor Sedgwick and many of the other men of science whom he most admired, Whewell praised Owen’s achievements, and then spoke of Charles. Thinking of his work on the succession of fossil forms in South America,Whewell referred to “the profound and enlarged speculations on the diffusion, preservation, and extinction of races of animals to which Mr Darwin has been led by the remains which he has brought home.” He hoped that Professor Owen and Mr. Darwin, “so fitted by their endowments and character to advance the progress of science, may long go on achieving new triumphs,” and that they would succeed in throwing light “upon the darkest and widest of the vast problems which they have proposed to themselves.” Charles alone in the room knew the darkest and widest problem he was working on. He was ready to carry forward his “profound and enlarged speculations.” But he also knew that his conclusions would be rejected out of hand by almost everyone in the room.

  Moving on to survey the geological discoveries of the year,Whewell described one of the most remarkable, the first find of fossil primates in geological strata long predating man. With his branching diagram in mind, Charles could see at once how the fragments pointed to the possibility of a common ancestry for man and the man-like apes. Whewell also recognised the extraordinary possibility, but saw the dangers lurking behind it and quickly called a halt to speculation. “The origin and end of man’s being” was clearly at issue, but the question must be tackled by focusing on “the most remarkable facts in his nature,” his “intellectual, moral and religious constitution,” and “civilisation, art, government, writing and speech.” Such matters were beyond the natural sciences. “The geologist may well be content to close his own volume, and open one which has man’s moral and religious nature for its subject.”

  After the meeting, Whewell and Owen went with Lyell, Buckland and others for a meal of “pterodactyl pie” (woodcock, as Lyell explained to a friend) and bumpers of cognac in a friend’s apartment in Mayfair. Charles did not join them, but returned alone to his lodgings to carry on his secret thinking. He was struck by Whewell’s evasive dismissal of the clear pointers to man’s common ancestry with the apes. Taking up Whewell’s suggestion that “the most remarkable point in man’s nature” was the mental and moral capabilities that distinguished him from animals, he noted that people “often talk” about the “wonderful event of intellectual Man appearing” for the first time. He did not agree that the point was the most remarkable one. “The appearance of insects with other senses is more wonderful,” and the emergence of man was “nothing compared to the first thinking being.”

  Charles noted in his almanac that during the following days, he “speculated much about existence of species, and read more than usual.” His thinking about animal and human nature now came together—man and brute, slave-owner and slave, savage and civilised, fossils and living beings, differences and likenesses. He was developing a theory of how new species might be formed continually through descent and physical isolation. He saw its power to explain the development of both animals and humans, bodily forms and the human mind. He noted how the theory would lead to a study of instincts and mind as inherited traits and capabilities, and from there how it might lead to a “whole metaphysics.” The theory could be used to examine the causes of change in the natural world “in order to know what we have come from and to what we tend.” Charles was now racing forward with his ideas. “Animals whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equals.” Do not slave-owners wish to make the black man a separate kind of being from themselves? “If we choose to let conjecture run wild,” as animals are “our fellow brethren in pain, disease, death and suffering and famine, our slaves in the most laborious work, our companions in our amusements,” we may all “partake, from our origin in one common ancestor, we may all be netted together.” His grammar broke down in the last wild sentence, but from his use of the word “netted” elsewhere, he clearly meant not “caught” but “meshed” or “interlaced.” Common descent meant shared nature, and that idea was one key to understanding man’s place in the living world.

  Charles was now challenging the thinking of the age on human nature. One of his guiding lights was David Hume, the Scottish philosopher of the previous century. Hume’s name was not one to bandy about at the time because his sceptical treatment of religion was reckoned to be atheistical and “obnoxious,” but his writings were in the library of the Athenaeum Club and at Maer Hall, and during 1838 and 1839 Charles became familiar with all the main strands of his thinking. The unique way in which Hume combined the sharpest critical reasoning about received views with the aim of creating a “science of man” based on common sense and empirical observation was helpful.

  In his Treatise of Human Nature Hume had proposed that the science of man should take account of the links between human reason and the mental powers of animals, and put the reasoning faculty in its proper place in the life of sentient beings. “Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.” In his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals he had developed that idea, basing his whole theory of the moral sense and its compelling power on sources among the natural human affections and sympathy rather than Divine instruction, abstract principles or Utilitarian self-interest. In his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion he had tackled arguments for the existence of God and pointed to serious weaknesses in the so-called argument from design in natural
theology, and his Natural History of Religion suggested that human notions of God had developed naturally from our understanding of our own actions and our anxiety about events we could not control. Hume’s success in covering all these issues together from a single naturalistic point of view encouraged Charles as he tackled the high questions about human origins. He recognised the value of the way in which Hume had tackled philosophical riddles. “I suspect the endless round of doubts and scepticism might be solved by considering the origin of reason as gradually developed. See Hume on sceptical philosophy.” He followed Hume in speculating that the idea of God might have developed from features of the human mind, and then dealt with the nature and workings of our moral sense in the same way.

  On a warm spring day a few weeks after the meeting of the Geological Society of London, Charles went with his idea to the Zoological Gardens. He wrote to his sisters in Shrewsbury that when the animals were turned out, “Such a sight has seldom been seen, as to behold the rhinoceros kicking and rearing (though neither end reached any great height) out of joy . . . The elephant was in the adjoining yard and was greatly amazed at seeing the rhinoceros so frisky. He came close to the palings and after looking very intently, set off trotting himself, with his tail sticking out at one end and his trunk at the other, squealing and braying like half a dozen broken trumpets.”

  Charles was able to see Jenny the orang “in great perfection.” The keeper showed her an apple, but would not give it to her, “whereupon she threw herself on her back, kicked and cried, precisely like a naughty child. She then looked very sulky and after two or three fits of passion, the keeper said ‘Jenny if you will stop bawling and be a good girl, I will give you the apple.’ She certainly understood every word of this, and though, like a child, she had great work to stop whining, she at last succeeded, and then got the apple, with which she jumped into an arm chair and began eating it, with the most contented countenance imaginable.”

  A few weeks later, Charles toyed obliquely in his notes with the possibility that man had evolved from an animal ancestor, and saw that once it was granted that one species might change into another, “the whole fabric totters and falls.” He took man down from his pedestal, comparing the wild savage in Tierra del Fuego with the tame orang in the Zoological Gardens. “Let man visit Ourang-outang in domestication, hear expressive whine; see its intelligence when spoken [to], as if it understood every word said; see its affection to those it knew; see its passion and rage, sulkiness and very actions of despair; let him look at savage . . . and then let him dare to boast of his proud pre-eminence.” The links here were as strange and disturbing to him as to any of the others who had watched Tommy or Jenny, but he wanted to explore them. He concluded: “Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work, worthy the interposition of a deity. More humble and I believe true to consider him created from animals.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  NATURAL HISTORY OF BABIES

  Mind and memory—Religion—Human nature—Emma’s faith—

  Observations on Willy and Annie—Daguerreotype

  IT WAS NOW IN MID-1838, while Charles’s mind was full of apes, philosophers and savages and his conjectures were running wild, that he decided “Marry Marry Marry.” He went to stay with his father in Shrewsbury and opened another notebook for his “metaphysical inquiries.” His mind was also drawn to religion, and as he faced new possibilities in every direction, idea led to idea.

  He asked his father about patients of his with mental disorders, and looked for clues to the workings of the human mind in what his father told him about their breakdowns. Was the mind purely spiritual as most Christians believed, or might it have some material basis in the brain, and be affected by the condition of the body? His father told him that one of his patients, after a paralytic stroke, could not remember a neighbour’s name but could recall it and talk about him if an “early association,” say from their schooldays together, was called up. Might that be due to a physical factor which had different effects on the power to remember in childhood and in old age?

  Charles read about the science of mind and found a book which dwelt at length on memory as one of the most revealing and intriguing of our mental faculties. John Abercrombie, First Physician to Queen Victoria in Scotland, had published his Inquiries Concerning the Intellectual Powers to encourage young doctors to take an interest in the subject. He distinguished between memory, which was involuntary, and recollection, which was a conscious act. Control of your thoughts was the aim, and it was best understood by the contrast with the mind’s lack of control in dreaming, insanity and other conditions. Charles noted how a “vivid thought” could not be dismissed even by the strongest will, and asked himself: “Is insanity an unhealthy vividness of thought?” Abercrombie mentioned the ways in which associations influence memory, and commented on the inexplicable power of “local” or “incidental” associations to revive deep feelings. He wrote that “the accidental discovery of some trifling memorial” “produces a freshness and intensity of emotion known only to those who have experienced it.”

  Charles thought carefully about the way his own memory worked, and wrote a seven-page note on his recollections between the ages of four and eleven to see whether he could trace any patterns. Did he remember happenings or only pictures from them? What feelings came back with the thoughts? He distinguished between true recollections of things themselves and memories of memories; he was intrigued by his recollections of the feelings of fear, pride and shame, and he was fascinated to find that he seemed to have acquired his own power of memory quite abruptly, as he could remember the earliest things “quite as clearly as others very much later in life which were equally impressed on me.” He asked his sisters Catherine and Susan what they could call to mind, and gathered that Catherine had a better memory for ideas than images. For her, “a vivid thought is repeated, a vivid impression forgotten.”

  Charles thought also about Emma’s mother at Maer in her dementia. He had gathered that her affections had “failed” more than her memory. He wrote cryptically about the sick old lady, who was both his aunt and soon possibly to be his mother-in-law, “Therefore affections effect of organisation, which can hardly be doubted when seeing Nina with her puppy.” Nina was his sisters’ dog at Shrewsbury. What he meant by the comment was that since Aunt Bessy’s affections were breaking down together with her mind and body, they must stem, like a bitch’s instinctive mothering, from her organic makeup rather than any spiritual element of her being. In the language of the day, this idea was “materialism,” heretical and subversive. Charles thought at once of the danger it presented, and worked out a way to conceal the direction of his thinking. “To avoid stating how far I believe in materialism, say only that emotions, instincts, degrees of talent which are hereditary, are so because brain of child resemble[s] parent stock.”

  Charles talked at the Athenaeum with a physiologist, Herbert Mayo, who took a particular interest in the power of memory and its relation to our sense of personal identity. Charles read his book The Philosophy of Living and noted his accounts of dreaming and “double consciousness” in which a person switched from one identity to another with no memory of either while in the other. Charles wrote: “The possibility of the brain having whole trains of thoughts, feeling and perception separate from the ordinary state of mind is probably analogous to the double individuality implied by habit . . . These facts showing what a train of thought, action &c will arise from physical action on the brain, render much less wonderful the instincts of animals.”

  Charles thought about his religious beliefs. By his own later admission, “the religious sentiment” was never “strongly developed” in him, and he laid no store by soul-searching or prayer; but he wanted to be clear about the articles of faith. Many points were being argued about at the time. Three main elements of Holy Scripture were in question—the Genesis account of the creation of the world and the Fall of Man, the wrathful character of the God of the Old Testament, and the New
Testament Revelation with Christ’s promise of eternal life and salvation by faith. Underlying these doctrines was the issue of belief in an ever-present God, wise, purposeful and beneficent. And below that lay the ultimate question of the “First Cause,” the mystery behind the creation of the universe and whatever gave rise to sentient life. The grounds of religion were also a concern. Many at the time based their beliefs on reasoning from the “evidences” of Scripture and natural theology. For others, the feeling of unworthiness before God and the act of faith were the key.

  A note Charles made at the time reveals how down to earth his own approach was. “It is an argument for materialism that cold water brings on suddenly in head a frame of mind analogous to those feelings which may be considered as truly spiritual.” After rejecting a literal reading of the Genesis account of the Creation as he learnt about the vastness of geological time, Charles questioned other historical parts of the Hebrew Bible, and found that he could not accept the God of the Old Testament because he was described as a vengeful tyrant. In rejecting that figure, he was following many others at the time who based their faith on the loving God of the Christian Revelation. But he did not stop there. He was also puzzled by the way in which the message of salvation was revealed in the New Testament. Having found flaws in the Old Testament account of the Creation and God’s nature, he could not believe that God expected us to accept Christ’s message on the authority of the New Testament, because the Gospels placed such emphasis on the fulfilment of the Old Testament prophecies. If God had meant us to accept Christ’s message, he would surely have given it a more credible and persuasive foundation.